Ludington City Council December 6, 2021: Mountains and Molehills

[XLFD]

At the December 6, 2021 meeting of the Ludington City Council they passed two important items, one that happens only once a year, one that happens only once every five years.  The 2022 budget and Comprehensive/Master Plan update were passed unceremoniously and unanimously by the council with a simple voice vote, as did an ordinance to move the allowable amount of licensed short-term rentals (STRs) in the city to rise from 30 to 50, and to locally regulate small cell wireless facilities.  

While passing a yearly budget and a five-year master plan (reproduced fully in the agenda packet), both obviously taking the crafting officials a lot of time and passing two full ordinances to appease citizens wanting more STRs and better protection from 5G towers, these mountains of effort took little effort to approve.  All four issues took the council no more than ten minutes total to bring forth, discuss, and pass.  

When one reviews the 76 minute video, the vast bulk of the meeting (54 minutes) consisted of public comment and the council's re-discussion of a FOIA appeal filed by this author.  The comments and the FOIA appeal were definitely minutia, the molehills that are far less important in scope and much more forgettable over time than the budget or master plan, but tonight they took center stage. 

Nathaniel Rose and his wife, Jana, proprietors of Love Wines at 925 South Washington, led off the public comments with complaints of how the evening siren now operating out at Copeyon Park was a source of constant irritation for Nathaniel who has PTSD from his time in the service.  When they purchased the property in 2019, the siren was still in mothballs, but it has reportedly been a triggering source for Nathaniel who had similar air raid sirens back when he was serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Had the siren been operating then, they alleged they wouldn't have purchased it.  The siren which had been downtown and sounding for many decades, was moved over to Copeyon Park earlier this year without any strong comments against it then.

The only other initial commenter was this author.  I started with some praise for the Ludington City Clerk Deb Luskin, made a request for 2022 meeting dates, and finished with my introduction of the FOIA appeal:

XLFD (12:00 in):  "Let me first acknowledge the perseverance of City Clerk Deb Luskin, who not only had to sit through the last meeting's marathon lasting nearly four hours, but after all that had to faithfully chronicle the minutes.  Over the last year, I have been attending city commission meetings in Scottville, and though their meetings tend to have fewer issues and shorter durations, the template minutes of those meetings always tend to be two pages in length and rarely mention deliberations or the policy under discussion, only decisions.  When I miss a Scottville meeting, as I am tonight, I know I won't be able to capture what actually happened at that meeting just by reading the minutes.  To Clerk Luskin's credit, if I miss a Ludington council meeting I can read her prepared minutes and know what was discussed and practically everything of consequence that happened in my absence.  

As regards Scottville, tonight they are set to choose meeting dates for 2022 convening at 6:30 which fall on the second and fourth Mondays of each month.  During my lifetime, and before, Scottville has always met on the 1st and 3rd Monday of the month, while similarly Ludington has met on the 2nd and 4th.  City Manager Foster strongly urged at the last meeting, and before that, for city councilors to consider attending public meetings of other bodies in the county; Scottville's move has made it impossible for Ludington councilors to do just that without being absent from their own meeting.  

I strongly urge this council to consider this when they decide on their meeting dates for 2022 at their next meeting, should Scottville pass their meeting date resolution tonight.  When the only two incorporated cities in Mason County meet on the same night at the same time, it negatively affects those who have interests in both cities and slows cooperative efforts between cities.  Please consider moving 2022 meetings to the first and third Mondays of the month.

Lastly, let me thank City Manager Foster for allowing this council to reconsider their choice made at the last meeting to reject disclosure of already disclosed information in my FOIA appeal.  FOIA is a pro-disclosure statute where the burden of proof is on you and any exemptions claimed must be individually justified in a response.  Had allowable exemptions been the issue, then Mr. Alvarado's memo to the council would have been applicable, but as pointed out by Councilor Terzano, it was long on law, but totally divorced from the issue that many exemptions did not fall under privacy or any other exemption and should never have been redacted.  I would appreciate your reconsideration in order to save us both a few trips to the courthouse to prove my point.  Thank you." [END]

The issues involving the siren and meeting dates were never addressed by the council this evening, but the council waded into the FOIA reconsideration around 37 minutes in and left it almost a half hour later.  If you've read about the last marathon meeting, they spent about an equal amount of time in figuring out that the public wasn't entitled to know the name of the victim who was ran over, her gender, her city or her age--

Except that the police chief had released that information in a press release two weeks before he responded to my request, and it was already publicly available information.  The City of Ludington for some odd reason totally against transparency, decided that they would veil that in my request for information.  It was totally unlawful, I could have taken it to any court, even corrupt ones, and won.  But I offered the council the chance to reconsider their move in a notice of intent to file a lawsuit.  

In their full hour of discussion over this topic, the council has never looked at the actual records with hundreds of redactions, many obviously covering impersonal data that would not fit the privacy exemption they claimed.  The FOIA Coordinator, Carlos Alvarado, offered several pages of legal rationale for the privacy exemption, but never applied it to the actual records he covered up as he should have.  If the council took their duties seriously, and the two who voted both times to un-redact the records show promise in that regard, they would have demanded to see the records and gauge for themselves whether the exemptions claimed rose to exemptions.  

I could have shown them the UD-10s/reports I had received before in prior accident FOIAs with minimal redactions in the proper spots and the UD-10/report I received for this incident with almost everything covered with ink or whited out.   But why bother, it's their burden (theoretically) to prove their exemptions were valid, not me, who is mostly ignorant of what has been redacted. 

Councilor Ted May was absent this evening, a probable 'no' vote since he has shown little commitment to transparency in the past, and I expected I might get a 3-3 vote since there had been some progress in the understanding of the issue by the councilors.  If that was the case, I fully expected a vote by the mayor to fall on my side.  The eventual vote surprisingly fell along gender lines (one of the things I was denied) with the four male councilors voting to allow me to see the previously city-released information, the two women voting against.

Now, the lawsuit was averted by their decision, but I have endeavored since Monday to confer with LPD to go over the rest of the records to make sure they put back all of the redacted 'impersonal' information, so depending on how that goes, this may still need to be tried in the future. 

The second public comment period featured Annette Quillan taking the City to task for the illogicality of postponing discussions on Accessory Dwelling Units while going full forward in expanding the STRs from 30 to 50.   I also wondered and questioned whether STR property owners would be offered some refund if the state decided to make STRs a residential use and the right of a property owner to commence.  City Manager Mitch Foster would answer after the meeting that they had considered the issue of refunds, but only speculatively since the bill's language might be altered by the time it is passed, if ever.

I also gave thanks to the council for reconsidering my appeal and coming to a better conclusion.  It may be a molehill in the larger scheme of things, but it does show promise that the council can grow in their transparency if they choose to do so.

[AQUAMAN]

Sameo very poor video and audio as the last mtg..

[XLFD]

Noticed that, hopefully they will work the bugs out of that in future meetings, this is a new technology-- instead of downloading the meeting's video at the library the next day, they are instantly transferring it live over to the City's Facebook page-- simulcasting so to speak.  That seems to have a cost in quality of the product.  I will speak with the camera guy at the next meeting to see whether they are aware of the issues.

[AQUAMAN]

Also, the wife of the soldier talked too long 3 min. 9 seconds, same with him, 3 min. 50 seconds, how come they weren't stopped short like everyone else is? Wife also stated soldier is taught to never complain about siren sounds, yet, that is all he did that nite. The installation of that siren was a time consuming and expensive endeavor to the COL, and it was long-planned on location, delaying it's usage for over a year. Last I knew there is sound-proof insulation that can be purchased too, so go get some for your bedroom sir. Or seek another residence elsewhere away from Copeyan Park. Pere Pointe condo owners aren't very happy with that siren either, but they aren't making a fuss yet either.

[XLFD]

Interesting tidbit about the Rose's complaint about the siren at Copeyon in today's paper in an article wrote by Justin Cooper

Sometimes it’s the little details that do it for Nathaniel Rose, a former sergeant in the U.S. Army. One time, all he was doing was standing outside an ice rink.

In his head, he was at war.

“It was just the mood, the setting, the way the moisture was in the air, the sun hitting it,” he said. “It felt like I was back in Kandahar.”

But twice every day, it’s something right across the street that triggers his post-traumatic stress disorder: the siren installed this year at Peter Copeyon Park.

That siren’s twice-daily wailing at noon and 10 p.m. is the “exact same” sound as air raid sirens that warned of incoming rocket attacks nearly every night of his first two tours, he said.

The siren was a fixture of downtown Ludington for decades, but it fell out of use in April 2019 when the land it was on changed hands. After a probe into possible new locations, the city selected Copeyon Park as its new home.

Nathaniel and his wife, Jana, described the emotional agony the siren causes them at the city council meeting Dec. 6. They hoped their story would move the city to at least cut out the 10 p.m. siren, but that wasn’t the only reason they came.

They also didn’t want the city to be able to claim ignorance if the Roses are left with no option but to take the matter to court.

“Every time I hear it, I flinch up for (Nathaniel),” Jana said. “You don’t want to talk about it because you just want to ignore it and move on with your day, but it’s just — I hate it for him. I absolutely hate it for him. I don’t think it’s fair. I think he deserves to have a little bit more peace and quiet at night.”

City Manager Mitch Foster said that while it is up to the city council to make a change, the city is taking the Roses’ concern “very seriously.”

“From my perspective, you never want to have a situation where … past traumatic experiences are being brought up over and over again through something like this,” he said.

He said the parks and recreation committee is going to discuss the siren at its next meeting at 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 21. The siren has been reviewed once before due to noise complaints, but no changes were made.

The Roses live on Washington Avenue in an apartment above their winery, Love Wines. They moved there in November 2019, when the siren was still silent. Previously they’d lived on Melendy Street, and with the siren then located downtown, it was often not even audible.

As they busied themselves restoring their building, the city’s plans for the siren filtered down to them in the form of rumors they weren’t sure whether to believe.

Their new bedroom window offered the over-the-lake view of Jana’s dreams. But once the city hooked up the siren, their home became a front-row seat to a sound that takes Nathaniel back to the mad dash to get inside a bunker and wait to see if he would live or die.

Nathaniel struggles with severe PTSD from his memories of his tours overseas. Jana told the council he logged over 100,000 driving miles in one tour, his humvee once being struck by an improvised explosive device. He was shot twice.

Nathaniel now sleeps alone in a makeshift bedroom downstairs, where the siren is least audible. Cranking up the TV in an adjacent “theater room” can also keep the sound at bay. But sometimes, when the sound catches him off-guard, he has to keep himself from scrambling for his gear and rushing to a bunker.

“We lived every night in fear (in Afghanistan and Iraq),” Nathaniel told the city council. “We often asked ourselves, ‘Is tonight the night 200 guys cramped in a concrete block make the death toll news?’ You never know.”

Standing behind the Love Wines counter on Thursday, Jana said she “couldn’t imagine doing something to put somebody in that kind of pain just for the sake of…”

When she trailed off, Nate finished her thought: “Nostalgia?”

Some born-and-bred Ludingtonites saw the siren’s reactivation in August as the comforting return of an old friend. City Councilors Kathy Winczewski and Cheri Stibitz, who are on the committee that handled the siren relocation, have fondly described childhood memories of having to be home before they heard the 10 p.m. siren.

Winczewski declined to comment on the siren or the Roses’ concerns before it is discussed at the parks committee. Stibitz referred questions to Foster, the city manager.

Jana said she respects the nostalgic appeal the siren has to some. But she hopes that others can likewise understand that it is “very hurtful to us and other veterans.”

“My biggest thing is I don’t want people to call (Nathaniel) a coward or a complainer, because that’s not who he is at all,” Jana said. “He’s a hero in my opinion, you know? He did what he was supposed to do. He looked fear in the eye and did his job.”

Winczewski told the committee in September that she spoke with psychological counselors about the siren’s possible effects on people with PTSD, and they told her that as long as it went off consistently, those with PTSD could get used to it.

Jana and Nathaniel disagree.

“He’s never going to be able to hear that and not think about war,” Jana said.

And it isn’t just themselves that the Roses are concerned about. They say there must be other combat veterans in Ludington who are facing similar situations, but won’t speak up.

“The ones that really need the help are the ones you will never know about,” Jana said. “They’re drinking their nights away. They’re self-medicating. They’re not getting the actual help they need.”

She said that she intends to keep an open dialogue with the city, but if nothing is done about the 10 p.m. siren, the Roses will likely seek an attorney to launch a case against the city in a couple of months.

“We have a legal right to quiet enjoyment of our property, but since the air raid siren went up, we no longer get that right,” Jana said.

[Willy]

I've never been a fan of that siren and moving it into a residential neighborhood was not a good idea. The siren has lost it's purpose and reason for existing. I say keep the siren but silence it or move it to an area where it will not disturb it's neighbors. I'm not saying this because of Mr. Rose. I'm saying it because it makes sense. Having a siren sound twice a day for non emergency situations is very odd since it's original purpose no longer exists. It would be like turning on emergency vehicles sirens twice a day just so folks who like the sound can hear them. It's funny that some of the modern progressive elites in town want to change societies norms but don't think twice about preserving a relic of the past. It wasn't that long ago that the neighbors of White Pine Village asked that a large bell, in the Village, be silenced because so many tourists were ringing it which caused a disturbance in the neighborhood.

On the other hand folks must understand that the World is not going to change for them and everyone must adjust daily  to life in order to keep an even keel. For instance the coal smoke from the Badger can be stinky and nauseating while it sits in port. There are many people with breathing conditions but they somehow adjust to this condition which can exist for many hours each day.